Love in the time of …

It’s only the first week of February but many have already contracted the love bug virus. In our mail inbox today is a very sweet quote written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, famous writer from Colombia and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, who recently retired from public life for health reasons. As a farewell note to all his friends, he wrote:

“To all men, I would say how mistaken they are, when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old, when they stop falling in love.”

Garcia Marquez is the author of “Love in the time of cholera”, a great love story about unrequited love, a theme that the IV-1 peps are no strangers to. With this post, we would like to relive our kilig moments of the past by recalling the loveteams our class has produced.

1. Noelito and Pearly – These two were already going steady when we started our senior year. How their love affair began (and ended) will be of one the questions we will pose to Perly now that she finally got in touch with us.

2. Ariel and Yoly – “Let her cry for she’s a lady, let her dream for she’s a child …” Ariel loved to sing this song (“Wildflower” by Skylark) and we’re not sure if he was dedicating this to Yoly, the apple of his eyes then. We recall those times when Ariel would invite the peps to visit Yoly in Concepcion, Marikina, where the Mañalacs had transferred.

3. Larry and Nitz – This loveteam could have been the class’ greatest love story if only for Larry’s passion and perseverance to make Nitz dance the love dance. Larry really fell head over heels for Nitz and we remember him crying his heart out for the latter’s seeming lack of interest. Napakasakit, Kuya Eddie. But we knew Larry had moved on when his favorite song became Earth Wind & Fire’s “After the love has gone”.

4. Dado and Rorie/Dado and Malu – No, they did not form a ménage à trois. Dado dated Rorie when we were still in college and Malu after our college graduation. Both relationships were shortlived, though.

5. Eddie and Jocelyn – These two were the class’ ex-future loveteam. Eddie had a crush on Jocelyn and did attempt to woo the latter but, for reasons still unknown to us, eventually decided to back out from it all.

6. Resty and Zeny – Resty started having feelings for Zeny when we were still in high school. But nothing came out of it. In fact, the two even had a serious fight once at the Ventura campus. So who would have thought that 10 years later, in our reunion in 1998, love would be rekindled, with Resty becoming more persistent to win her over. Thanks to Santong Dasalan and Santong Paspasan, this “saga” ended up with the two exchanging “I do’s” in a solemn wedding ceremony in Caloocan witnessed by the IV-1 peps.

“Love in the time of cholera” succeeded in immortalizing the love that blossomed between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza and Doctor Juvenal Urbino. That’s why the foregoing love stories we just related will definitely have to be rewritten.

How we wish we had a Garcia Marquez to give justice to our first encounter with that crazy little thing called love …

(By the way, we wanted to include here the story of John Marte and his secret and undying love for a classmate of ours. Our apologies if we can’t elaborate on this as of yet. We are going to consult a lawyer first to ascertain if naming the object of his desire is neither libelous nor slanderous.)